COME, COME, COME, COME. GIVE ME YOUR HAND.
what's done cannot be undone.

The sun slipped lethargically into its throne of high noon, and a ghost slipped silently into place besides Senna. 

The clinging static of magic sang against his skin, but for all it bothered him (how the seventh prince loved and loathed the power which would forever elude his reach), he gave no acknowledgement of the magic user’s presence.

His ember gaze remained locked on the impending crisis in front of him. Nothing would break his concentration—not even when the ghost leaned forwards, pressed against his neck, and whispered belladonna-stained words into his ear. Soft and drawling, low and sneering. “...somehow all your genius hasn’t secured you a useful title.” 

She need not show herself. That silken voice belonged to none other than Bexley Briar. Seraphina’s right hand. Acton’s widowed wife. 

A muscle twitched in Senna’s cheek, but her provocations failed to light any anger. Only a mild irritation—living coals that none except Zofia had ever doused. “I am quite content with the ones I already wield, Bexley Briar,” he sighed. Any more titles upon his head, Senna thought, and his neck would snap from the weight.

“Solterra’s lords are crowned in blood, Senna. It breaks my heart that you think your boot-licking is useful.”

He felt Nestor’s rage bear down like a battering ram against the walls of his mind. Walls he’d hastily constructed for this very purpose—the falcon’s temper was shorter than a matchstick, and he couldn’t risk her emotions muddling his own. Seneca. They will never understand. Not then, not now. He ignored her.

He’d uttered his warning to the Dawn Regent with full awareness of the sort of bitter retaliation he’d receive. By not condemning Raum in public, he’d condemned himself. He’d sat at the helm of Solterran politics far too long not to understand, with bitterness, how the masses cared so very little for affairs conducted out of the public eye.

Senna knew that for Solis’ warrior court, appearances—public challenges, public punishments, public vengeance—were all they cared for.

“Crowned in blood, as you say. Perhaps Seraphina would have reigned longer if she'd launched a blood reckoning of her own,” he replied softly, right eye flicking numbly to her when the long-absent regent flashed into wavering existence. 

Let her interpret his words as she liked. He’d never bent his head to Seraphina during her time as sovereign—Bexley knew that. At her coronation, he’d thought the young soldier turned queen unprepared to bear the weight of the crown. He’d challenged her decisions at every turn. Had she expected blind obedience, spoon-fed appreciation? She might’ve received that in any other court, but not in the kingdom of sun. Not before any of the court could forget the corruption of Zolin, the siege of the castle. The purge of the nobility. 

Nestor’s earshattering shriek rang down from the skies seconds before the vulture appeared and settled like a black blight upon Bexley’s shoulders. That is no ordinary vulture! She is a demon, summoned from the pits of hell itself, Nestor crowed, and Senna winced when her scream demolished his mental wall. Her rage flooded his thoughts in a pool of scalding water. 

“Poor dear,” the demon cooed. “Poor darling.” Where had she come from? Who had sent her? He could barely arrive at conclusions before Nestor dove like a felled star towards him, pulling herself short just before ramming into his cloaked shoulder. Her talons tore through the fabric like a knife through paper, and blood—his blood—oozed out to fill the holes. 

He couldn’t fault her. Her primal fear—and on top of that, an armor of predatory fury—radiated like a supernova from her trembling body. If she worked herself into a state, he would lose his control over her entirely. Calm down, Nestor. The vulture—demon—is not moving from her perch. Do not act rashly. He swallowed his wince when her talons dug further into his flesh. And ease up while you are at it. Guiltily, the falcon retracted her talons. 

Calming his bonded had taken him away from the spiraling situation at hand. Raum had spoken, and then the dark woman, but Senna hadn’t caught their words. Not that it mattered. One glance heavenwards, one answering tremble of the shifting sands, and his worst fears were confirmed. 

Raum had summoned his beast. A demon had flown down from the skies. His words of caution were resoundly, gleefully, rejected. 

The situation had festered like a gangrene-riddled wound left out too long in the sun.

The Dawn regent strode forward, like a knight in the tales of old. You fool! he wanted to shout, but it was too late. He had compromised his position too deeply, and the Regent’s virtuousness had become a poison masquerading as elixir. He could only watch in silence as the Regent tipped the elixir flask back and drank.

Within striking distance of the Blood King’s magicked claws, and the scarf-bound eyes of his basilisk, Ipomoea said: “Nothing here belongs to you, Raum.” 

“Not even your own life.”

And then the eagles fell. 

Before the first one could reach him, Senna’s tenuous net of restraint over Nestor tore to pieces with one shriek of her hunting cry. Lifting into the air, she barreled into the path of the first eagle and sank her talons into its chest. Ripped out its heart with her beak, and tossed it to the sand at Senna’s hooves. Blood speckled his chest, indistinguishable from the color of his pelt.

Ipomoea’s vine of thorns cracked down in Raum’s direction, meters away from where he stood. He had no doubts where the Regent was aiming. Would not wait to taste its wicked thorns for himself. 

In the space of a second, Senna’s once-reluctant mouth curled into a snarl. With one downward stroke of his wings he shot upwards into the air, striking away eagles with his hooves. One managed to sink its talons into his left wing before he shook it off, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain he'd endured at the hand of his father and brothers. Laughable to the drowning waves of torment he’d felt when he laid his eyes upon his wife’s slashed throat, and his daughter’s hair matted with her mother’s blood. 

His scimitar sang as it slid out from its sheath, invoked for the first time in years. 

“Ipomoea!” he boomed down to them all, massive wings unfurling to block out the sun. “Will you kill him?” The point of his scimitar spun slowly in the air, like the needle of a compass teetering towards due north. Towards Raum. Towards the monster he held at bay with a sapphire scarf.

“Will you lay down your life to end his? Ensure that Raum will not survive to lash his rage upon the Solterran people?” A barking laugh dripped out from his mouth, cut short as Nestor sliced through the air and fell upon another eagle. Ripped out another heart. 

Was it right to bend over backwards and hail Raum? He knew of no fool who had.

Was it right to clamor for his head as due payment? What the reaper reaped he shall sow. But beheaded by whose hand? With whose army? Where was this Resistance he had heard so many whispers about? They blamed him for inaction, for licking the boots of the king. The Hajakha’s had no standing army. Most citizens despised them for bearing the crest of Zolin, and would never serve under their flag. 

No noble had been willing to take action, himself included, because the king’s wrath was a starved lion pacing at their gates. Waiting, waiting, for the chance to strike.

Unlike all of you—his gaze fell upon Bexley, Torstein, the Crow King, even the damned demon—I still have much to lose. A House to defend. The Hajakha’s—their taste for indulgence even when the commoners were starving gave him endless headaches. They had never treated him well. They were spoiled, needy, cynical. Impossible.

But they were Zofia’s family. His blasted, dysfunctional family. And he would not throw his life away for the greater good, whatever noble pursuit they—standing there now, believing him loyal to Raum—deemed it be. Perhaps it was due to their youth. He could remember when he had been the same. But now that he was a father, that boy who once hungered for glory, he was dead. Mixed in with the ashes of his wife. 

Leaving Sol fatherless, after his failure three years ago had cost his daughter her mother, was unthinkable.

The rulers of Solterra, save Seraphina, all shared a common attribute. They never thought. They just acted. The boar king, Maxence, had never considered the burden he would thrust upon his young regime before gallivanting straight into the claws of a Teryr. Raum had traipsed from his castle, invoked his beast, all to flex his indomitable might to a young regent handing out apples. Who couldn’t hold a blade if his life depended on it.

“If you really wanted to help us, Ipomoea, you would’ve brought an army,” Senna seethed. “And you, king,” he said, lowering himself down just a little to lay the point of his blade delicately upon Legion’s muzzle. Soft as a snake's flickering tongue. “Swallow your pride. Bring harm to the Regent, and I swear upon Solis' head I will rally the noble houses against you. We have had enough.” 

His blade sang through the air as he sliced off the wing of an attacking eagle. Blood rained down upon the sand. 

Nestor. We are leaving. If they want to bring their own ruin, let them. And with one sweep of his wings, one parting glance, Senna shot upwards into the sky, into the cooling embrace of the clouds. 

Flew like an archer’s last arrow towards the Hajakhan residence. The tides were turning. The end—of Raum’s reign, of Solterra, he didn’t know which—was coming soon, and he would be damned if he would not do all he could to ready for it. 

If such a thing can be readied for, he thought, as resignation as hard as cooling magma turned Senna’s eyes a deep, crow black.


☾

@Ipomoea @Raum @Torstein @Efphion @Seraphina "senna" nestor
// senna has,, left the chat,,, (rip to all the npc eagles killed in this post I love nature I swear ;_; )